{"id":23962,"date":"2016-03-17T01:58:28","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T01:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/qatari-poet-pardoned-after-5-years-in-jail\/"},"modified":"2016-03-17T01:58:13","modified_gmt":"2016-03-17T01:58:13","slug":"qatari-poet-pardoned-after-5-years-in-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/qatari-poet-pardoned-after-5-years-in-jail\/","title":{"rendered":"Qatari poet pardoned after 5 years in jail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Mohammed Rashid al-Ajami was sentenced to life in prison for allegedly insulting the emir of Qatar in 2011.}<\/p>\n<p>Qatar has pardoned an imprisoned poet who spent nearly five years in jail for allegedly insulting the Gulf state&#8217;s former emir.<\/p>\n<p>Mohammed Rashid al-Ajami was sentenced to life in prison on November 29, 2011, for insulting the Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and spreading incendiary material.<\/p>\n<p>He was arrested in 2011 after the publication of his &#8220;Jasmine poem&#8221;, which was critical of governments across the Gulf region following the uprisings of the Arab Spring.<\/p>\n<p>In 2013, Ajami was granted an appeal after his jail term was reduced to 15 years, but his sentence was upheld by Qatar&#8217;s highest court. His only recourse was to appeal to Qatar&#8217;s current emir for clemency.<\/p>\n<p>According to Abdullah al-Athbah, editor-in-chief of the Doha-based Al Arab newspaper, Ajami, received a pardon from Qatar&#8217;s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The United Nation&#8217;s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights confirmed to the Associated Press news agency that Ajami had been released.<\/p>\n<p>Rights groups hailed his release, with London-based Amnesty International calling it &#8220;long overdue good news&#8221;. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-10994 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/20121130121713477734_20.jpg\" alt=\"Ajami was arrested in 2011 for a poem critical of Gulf governments across the region\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Mohammed Rashid al-Ajami was sentenced to life in prison for allegedly insulting the emir of Qatar in 2011.} Qatar has pardoned an imprisoned poet who spent nearly five years in jail for allegedly insulting the Gulf state&#8217;s former emir. Mohammed Rashid al-Ajami was sentenced to life in prison on November 29, 2011, for insulting the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23962"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23962"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}